Reddit shuts down community seeking Navy Yard shooter

Reddit says a group for tracking down the Navy Yard shooter was banned for violating terms about posting personal information.

Story highlights

Reddit shuts down community created to seek Navy Yard shooters

Site, which was embarrassed in the wake of Boston bombings, says it violated its terms

Reddit bans the posting of personal information about others

Aaron Alexis, 34, has been named the lone shooter and was killed in the attack

Months after apologizing for overeager users fingering innocent people as potential suspects in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit on Monday shut down a section devoted to chasing down the Washington Navy Yard shooter.

Clicking on the page, or "subreddit" as specialized communities are called on the site, "FindNavyYardShooters" now leads to an image of a closed door wrapped in yellow "Caution" tape and a message saying it has been banned.

"We banned it because it violated site rules by encouraging the posting of personal information," Reddit general manager Erik Martin said in a prepared statement. "We don't allow the posting of personal information under any circumstances."

The subreddit was created when authorities were still searching for suspects and it was unclear whether there was one shooter or multiple shooters. But Reddit shut it down almost immediately.

Police have since named Aaron Alexis, 34, as the lone gunman. He was killed Monday in a shootout with security at the naval yard.

What was Aaron Alexis thinking?

Just Watched

Survivors speak out after shooting

In separate subreddit about Washington D.C., a related post, "Active Shooter Washington Navy Yard," continued with Reddit's blessing. Users posted links to news sources, information from law enforcement and other official information in an effort to keep people informed in the shooting's aftermath.

On Tuesday, some were speculating that the Navy Yard subreddit may have been a joke. The user who created it uses the name "uglyredditors" and may have just been trolling -- doing something stupid or cruel just to get a reaction out of others.

Brian Merchant at Vice captured a screen shot of early conversation in the subreddit, which was mostly jokes, profanity and people saying the subreddit was a bad idea in light of Boston.

"Yes, nothing bad is going to come of this, surely" one user wrote. "Are they really going to let this s*** happen twice?"

In April, redditors banded together to try to piece together what happened in the Boston bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 260 others. What resulted was the sharing of photos of "suspects" that had been taken near the marathon's finish line.

Among other theories, users speculated that Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who had been missing since March, could be a possible suspect in the bombings. Tripathi's family temporarily took down a Facebook page asking for help finding him after they were bombarded by ugly comments.

Amid the confusion over the Boston bombings, other Reddit users focused on two young men with heavy-looking bags, one of whom wore a blue track suit. The New York Post even splashed a photo of the two marathon spectators on its front page with the headline, "Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon."

The guy in the track suit turned out to be a 17-year-old suburban Boston track star who told The Associated Press he was afraid to leave his house because of the scrutiny.

"We hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark exactly this type of witch hunt," Reddit's Martin said at the time. "We were wrong."

Founded in 2005, Reddit has become a hugely popular site divided into more than 5,400 communities that have essentially revamped the early Web's bulletin boards, with users posting information, links and thoughts rapidly in real time. It has almost 70 million monthly users.

Months after apologizing for overeager users fingering innocent people as potential suspects in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit shut down a section devoted to chasing down the Washington Navy Yard shooter.